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Wednesday, 15 August 2012

Formula Renault BARC Back at Donington

This is just about the only way you can see Formula Renault in the UK this year, and where better than Donington?

Britain’s
most popular and hotly contested one-make single-seater category, the
Protyre Formula Renault BARC Championship, returns to action at
Donington Park next weekend, 18th/19th
August, for a bumper three-race outing – an event which could prove
pivotal to the destiny of the 2012 title.

With
five races remaining, and a possible 170 points up for grabs, the
championship is still wide open but two drivers have started to
emerge as the main contenders, Cullen Motorsport’s Scott Malvern
(Barkingside, Ilford) and MGR Motorsport’s Josh Webster
(Stowmarket, Suffolk).

Ahead
of rounds 10, 11 and 12, two-time McLaren Autosport BRDC Award
finalist Malvern holds a slender seven point advantage over his
younger rival. Webster took a pair of faultless victories last time
out to reignite his challenge but Donington Park’s National
Circuit, unlike Croft and Thruxton the two previous venues on the
calendar, is a track Malvern has prior experience of.

While
both drivers are a long way clear of the tightly bunched chasing
pack, third placed Seb Morris (Marford, Wrexham) has taken three wins
so far in his maiden year of single-seater racing and will
undoubtedly be a threat at Donington.

Some
serious misfortune at both Thruxton and Croft, which resulted in two
non-finishes, has dented the 16-year-old’s title aspirations and
ahead of next weekend’s penultimate race meeting of the year the
Fortec Motorsports driver is 73 points adrift of Malvern.

Next
up is MGR’s David Wagner (Glasgow) who edged three points ahead of
Scorpio Motorsport’s Macaulay Walsh (Northampton) at Croft last
month. Walsh, in his first full season of car racing, endured a
desperately unlucky event in which he retired from the first race
with damage and only scored four points in the second encounter after
a driveshaft failure prior to the start.

Wagner,
meanwhile, had one of his strongest weekends of the year with a
welcome return to the podium in round nine, his first visit to the
rostrum since the opening race of 2012. The series top six is then
rounded-out by MGR’s James Fletcher (Windlesham, Surrey) and
Hillspeed’s Kieran Vernon (West Chiltington, West Sussex) who are
tied on points after both enjoying podium success at Croft.

Two
new faces join big grid for Donington races

Among
the expected 26 car grid for the Protyre Formula Renault BARC
Championship’s annual visit to Leicestershire will be two new
faces, 17-year-old Struan Moore (Trinity, Jersey) and 16-year-old
American-Norwegian national Falco Wauer.

Not
only will next weekend’s races with Hillspeed mark Moore’s
single-seater debut, the event will also see a long overdue return to
competitive action for the teenager who last raced in the Ginetta
Junior Championship in 2011 where he accrued several podium finishes.

Wauer,
who will be the youngest driver on the grid, is to compete with Cliff
Dempsey Racing and despite his age he already has a reasonable amount
of single-seater experience – namely in Formula Ford, Formula 4 and
the Norwegian Formula Basic series.

Qualifying
for rounds 10, 11 and 12 of the 2012 Protyre Formula Renault BARC
Championship will get underway at 10.30 next Saturday, 18th
August, with the first of the weekend’s races beginning at 15.50.
Rounds 11 and 12 will follow on Sunday, 19th
August, at 11.50 and 16.50 respectively.